An incredible journey

11:01am Wednesday 27th August 2008

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THEY were the photos that amazed the world. Startling pictures of a "lost tribe" whose existence was completely isolated from the rest of so-called civilisation.

As the intrepid photographer hovered over the rainforest, the tribesmen - covered in vivid red warpaint - raised their bows and arrows to ward off this unwelcome intruder in their Amazonian world.

The amazing images - shot over one of the most remote parts of the Brazilian rainforest - were taken by the Brazilian Government Indian Agency to prove the tribe existed and to help protect its land.

Rewind 500 years and Brazil was populated by up to ten million indigenous Indian tribespeople like these.

But the threats of slavery, war, disease and deforestation have destroyed all but a few isolated groups.

Thousands of communities have been totally wiped out - their land stripped bare by loggers, their rivers polluted by goldminers, their families killed by diseases like flu, malaria and chicken pox brought by outsiders.

It is not unusual for conflicts with loggers to end in death and the 30 or 40 groups that still exist have retreated, traumatised, to the most remote and inhospitable parts of the Amazonia.

Remarkably there are still dozens of these tribes that remain virtually uncontacted.

And one man - Sydney Possuelo - has made it his life's mission to ensure their ancient way of life can continue unharmed.

The 70-year-old Brazilian has dedicated his entire working life to protecting these Indian tribes, lobbying and campaigning on their behalf for more than 40 years and gaining international recognition for his achievements.

Now Southampton film-maker Steve Bowles is making a documentary about Sydney's extraordinary work, focusing on the traditional communities he strives to preserve and protect.

It was during a research expedition in 1983 that Steve first encountered the indigenous tribes of Brazil.

He and a team of fellow Southampton University graduates were there to study diseases among the tribespeople, carry out botanical surveys and investigate the effects of deforestation.

But, from the moment he met Sydney, Steve had other ambitions.

"I knew from that first meeting that I would make a film about him one day," said Steve, of Lordswood. "As you go through life you meet a small number of outstanding individuals. Sydney impressed me enormously. He had this tremendous vision of a more equitable world.

"The extraordinary thing about him is the two sides to his character: the shrewd politician and his passion and love for the indigenous people and the environment. He understands the importance of their culture and has empathy with them. With my environmental background the latter is something I share."

It was Sydney who first made the radical proposal of ceasing contact with the tribes in an effort to protect them.

"The policy used to be to contact them," explained Steve, "but when that happened around half the community would die from disease, their culture was turned upside down and the effects were traumatic. One of Sydney's great achievements was to say let's leave these people alone; let's protect their land to preserve their way of life. That's their right and they have made their choice'.

"Sydney's aim is to return their land to them, to get the government to recognise it as belonging to them and also to protect it from loggers and goldminers by stationing armed guards at points around the land.

"We're talking about protecting and monitoring areas the size of Wales - it's not easy."

During the course of his admirable work, Sydney has become something of a celebrity.

"His first visit to this country was in 1988 and I worked as a translator," recalls Steve. "We visited the Houses of Parliament and Oxfam and various places.

"Then in the late 1980s early 1990s discussion about saving the rainforest was very much en vogue. It had become a fashionable thing to talk about and Brazil was the focus.

"The Rio Earth Summit in 1992 was the biggest gathering of heads of state the world had ever seen and Sydney, who was the President of the Indian Foundation of Brazil at the time, suddenly found himself in the limelight. He was meeting with government ministers and instead of being put up in bed and breakfasts he was staying at the Ritz."

Steve - who has made documentaries for the BBC and the Discovery Channel - may be a film-maker by trade but, like Sydney, his real fascination lies with the tribespeople of Brazil and their plight.

He has made frequent trips to the rainforest over the last 25 years including a fact-finding mission with charity Survival International.

"There's a lot of talk about sustainability of the rainforest. A key way to preserve the rainforest is to preserve the people that live there," said Steve, 46.

"I've visited about 15 groups ranging from those that were very remote who had rarely been contacted through to groups whose cultures were destroyed. Some were living in pockets of land the size of a football field surrounded by sugarcane plantations. That was depressing. Here were people with no means of survival. They couldn't hunt - there was nowhere to go. The only option left to them was slavery in a plantation or prostitution.

"I could see the passage of time when I looked from those groups whose culture was intact to those that were virtually destroyed.

"I saw one child of nine working in a plantation. I filmed what I could then just left and cried."

Steve admits his latest documentary with his company EyeWitness Productions is his most ambitious project yet.

"Sydney has been on around 100 different expeditions and they have all been filmed by different crews. My task is to bring all that archive footage together and include new footage of Sydney reflecting on his experiences. He has gone on quite a journey. Now most of his great achievements are in the past and it seemed a good moment to make a film that I have had in the back of my mind for more than two decades."

Steve - whose last documentary The Guernica Children won a prestigious Royal Television Society Award in March - has already made a promotional excerpt for his latest film and now needs £120,000 to put it into production.

"These groups are the opposite to our society," he reflects. "We are obsessed with things while they are profoundly spiritual and the bonds within the groups are strong. In our society we live in isolation even though we are surrounded by people. We're full of preoccupations and anxieties - they are more content.

"We have been responsible for appalling suffering and terrible injustice. There's an iconic book called Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee which tells how the indigenous culture of the US was shattered.

"I read that book and felt the terrible sense of loss. Six or seven years ago I went to Brazil and that same story is happening there. But this time it's not too late to do something to cherish and preserve and treasure these cultures that remain.

"Sydney once said that with each one of the small groups that disappear from our planet the face of our society becomes that little bit poorer'.

"I hope this film will cause people who watch it to be a little more sensitive to what is going on in the world.

"And at least this time there's some hope that we can do better with the benefit of knowing what went wrong in the past."